Public Gifts, Private Donors

December 21, 1997|By Steven J. Stark. Steven J. Stark is a reporter in the Lake County bureau of the Tribune.

Giving is better than receiving, or so we are reminded, especially at this time of year.

The two often are linked in modern philanthropy, where money often must come with names attached--not necessarily because the donors demand the attention.

Case in point: Publicity-eschewing philanthropists Robert Pritzker (and his brother, Jay) and Robert W. Galvin planned to quietly donate $120 million to the Illinois Institute of Technology last year. The donation was a matching grant, so the school would have to come up with another $120 million to get the Pritzker-Galvin money.

To attract the matching funds--a formidable task--school officials prevailed upon "the two Bobs," as IIT officials call their longtime trustees Pritzker and Galvin, to allow their names to be publicized.

"We acquiesced, reluctantly," Pritzker said. "I prefer giving anonymously or at least quietly. (But) we wanted to encourage other people to give. The school pleaded with us to not make this anonymous or they'd have trouble raising more money."

With such social and psychological forces in flux, do the old ideals of charity always apply? Twelfth Century Jewish scholar Maimonides said it was more virtuous to give anonymously, and without being asked. But many would say the more visible way has earned its place and is worthy of praise--one person's largess can be infectious.

Even stealth philanthropic strategies, of course, can be motivated by something other than modesty. Anonymity is frequently employed by well-to-do philanthropists to avoid the pleas of other charitable groups or institutions, which invariably come looking for their own pieces of the pie. Others, like Pritzker, will accept publicity only when the causes they are funding outweigh the preference for privacy.

Ego-driven concerns about mortality seem to retain their place in donating. The National Charities Information Bureau, based in New York, says most Americans donate during November and December, unless there is a disaster earlier in the year that inspires a gift. Though many are moved by the holiday spirit, perhaps some of the generosity comes from knowing that the year's opportunities for good deeds, penance and tax deductions are dwindling.

The charities bureau expects donations to be up perhaps 5 percent in 1997 over last year for various reasons: the health of the economy, higher wages, the deaths of Mother Teresa and Princess Diana and the mega-donations of moguls Ted Turner and George Soros, who have publicly stated they would give away a combined $1.5 billion. Another reason donations could be up this year is the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, which contained a new provision for the tax deductibility of charitable donations of appreciated stock.

Naming or renaming in return for donations has its critics.

Some wondered whether gratitude devolved into something ignoble when Northwestern University's Dyche Stadium in Evanston was renamed Ryan Field this year. The Ryan family made the major donation to the school's fundraising drive for athletic facilities, which had a goal of $20 million.

It wasn't the Ryans' idea to wipe Dyche from the stadium's name, said Ronald D. Vanden Dorpel, vice president for development and alumni relations at Northwestern. It was the university's decision.

William A. Dyche was not a donor; he was the school's business manager, for whom the stadium was named in 1926, Vanden Dorpel said. After the Ryans' contributions, the university's board of trustees "felt it was appropriate" to rename the stadium.

"We believe that when we do receive a gift and it involves a naming of a facility, that that is a perpetual contract of sorts, and certainly a moral contract with the donor," Vanden Dorpel said.

Institutions have assumed a more aggressive role in securing donations, Vanden Dorpel said.

"It is so proactive now that rarely do you have someone coming to you out of the blue saying, `I'd like to give you $10 million, but you have to name this after me,' " Vanden Dorpel said. "No institution is that passive."

As for changing the name on a building, Vanden Dorpel was blunt.

"Nothing lasts forever," he said.

Yet, an enduring place in history or politics--sometimes out of vanity, sometimes not--is precisely what is sought when some share their wealth.

Chicago lawyer and philanthropist Robert A. Clifford was one who insisted on name acknowledgment in exchange for one of his donations. After quietly supporting his alma mater DePaul University Law School for years, he gave DePaul $1 million in 1992 to endow a chair--but this time there was one condition: It had to be called the Robert A. Clifford Chair on Tort Law & Social Policy.

"I tend not to be public with my donations, but this one was deliberate because I had an agenda," Clifford said last week. "I don't think I could have accomplished quietly what I did publicly."

He is convinced his gift--with his name attached--and the subsequent tort law discussions led others to join his crusade.